How to Get a Short URL for Your WordPress Blog Post or Page

10.09.2009

If you are writing a blog hosted on WordPress.com, you no longer need to turn to an URL shortening service to get a short URL for an article. WordPress has added their own shortening service directly on the page where you add your new posts. The service uses http://WP.me to shorten the URL address of the posts or pages that you want this action to be performed on.

When adding a post, you will see a new “Get Shortlink” button right next to your Permalink, just under the Title. Clicking on that button will open a popup window displaying the short URL.

Unfortunately, if you are using a third party application to write your blog posts (Windows Live Writer, Posterous, etc), you will still need to visit the dashboard to get the short link. This is because WordPress does not yet provide a wp.me API.

If someone puts up a link to the short link, a 301 redirect will be done by wp.me, so the main story is being reached.